


Never Again

by torakowalski



Category: due South
Genre: M/M, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-30
Updated: 2005-04-30
Packaged: 2017-10-22 01:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torakowalski/pseuds/torakowalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By the time I finish briefing Lieutenant Welsh on the situation, the last ambulance has left, travelling at a crawl in deference to its slain occupant. I’m worried about Ray, he is taking this badly, and now he is alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Again

By the time I finish briefing Lieutenant Welsh on the situation, the last ambulance has left, travelling at a crawl in deference to its slain occupant. I’m worried about Ray, he is taking this badly, and now he is alone.

“Lieutenant may I be …”

He is nodding before I even finish my sentence. “Tell him it wasn’t his fault,” he says quietly, nodding his head in the direction of the entrance lobby.

I nod automatically then turn towards the apartment building, managing to keep to a brisk walk until I am in the stairwell and out of the Lieutenant’s line of sight. Then I break into a run and sprint up to the twelfth floor, where grey-faced uniformed police officers and blood-smudged police tape tell of the tragedy that unfolded here.

They move out of my way as I turn left at the top of the stairs and walk down the corridor, past door after closed, blank door, until I come to one that is slightly open. I push it further and step inside.

I have to jump aside quickly to avoid a member of the forensics team who is carrying a sealed plastic bag containing a bloodied rag doll. Her eyes meet mine, and though she makes no comment I know we are both thinking the same thing.

“What a waste.” Another officer is saying to a third as they kneel over a pathetically small silhouette outlined in white chalk near one of the doors off the hall.

I stride past them, trying not to notice two more shapes, similarly tiny, and walk into the main bedroom. Ray is standing at the window, hands gripping the sill as if to remain upright, his face white and pressed to the glass.

“Ray,” I say gently.

He blinks, but doesn’t turn around.

“Ray,” I walk across the room and step up to him. “Ray, please, this wasn’t your fault.”

This close I can see he is shaking, but his voice is painfully calm and controlled when he speaks. “Three kids, Frase. Three fucking kids. And she was pregnant with another one.”

“I know, Ray.” His wife’s pregnancy was what tipped the balance for Mr Dubenko. He insisted in wasn’t his. Mrs Dubenko insisted it was. The question is academic now. He shot her twice, once through the stomach, and again though the head.

Ray and I were the first officers on the scene. Initially it had seemed as if Mr Dubenko would give himself up quietly, then his three older children arrived home from school. He grabbed them before we had a chance to stop him, and a homicide became a hostage situation. Ray tried for hours to pacify him, doing everything he could to bargain for the children’s lives. Even once the professional negotiators arrived, Ray insisted on remaining. I hope to never again see the expression his face took on when the shooting started.

Ray finally lifts his face from the windowpane and looks at me. His pale blue eyes are blank and lost, and swimming with tears. There is blood all over the front of his shirt from where he tried to stem the youngest child’s bleeding and from where he cradled her to his chest, once he found that he could not.

“Ray,” I say softly, reaching out to pull him into my arms.

He resists. “Don’t, I’m all dirty,” he whispers indicating the blood.

But I insist and he comes to me. His arms go around my waist, and his face presses into my shoulder. For a moment, he is motionless apart from the shaking he cannot control, then suddenly he is sobbing in my arms, the same way he did after he saved Beth Botrelle. Only that time I knew what to say. That story had a happy ending; this does not.


End file.
